An Author Must be Ready to Sell Books

The Rule of Sales

Part 3 of An Author’s Guide to Hand Selling Books
by David A. Rozansky, Publisher, Flying Pen Press
Readers, Writers & Royalties columnist
October 9, 2007

 
[This is the third article in a nine-part series.]

 
In the first article in this series, I gave a general overview of why authors should sell their own books. In that article, I gave a list of the seven rules we teach authors about how they can hand sell their own books.

To quickly review, these seven rules are:

1. The Rule of Use. Authors must use books to sell books. (Discussed in the previous installment).

2. The Rule of Sales. Authors must be mentally and logistically prepared to sell their books.

3. The Rule of 3 Feet. Authors must tell everyone that comes within 3 feet about their books.

4. The Rule of 200. Authors must prepare a list of 200 contacts and work those contacts as their core fan base.

5. The Rule of 5x5. Authors must make five separate contacts, five times a day, and try to sell their books.

6. The Rule of Writing. Authors must keep writing new books.

7. The Rule of Crowds. Authors must sell their books before large crowds, preferably on the Internet.

This article will discuss the second rule, the Rule of Sales, in detail.

The Rule of Sales states, “To sell a product, the seller must sell the product.” At first, this rule seems reflexive and inane, but within this quasi-Yogi Berra-ism, there are powerful selling secrets.

One of the hidden meanings is that no one can sell a book for the author. Many authors complain when they hear this. They believe that the publisher’s job is to sell the book ot the trade and market the book to the consumers. While publishers certainly do their best to get the book out there, and often quite successfully, the truth is that if the author does not try to sell the book, then depending on someone else to do it is usually going to lead to failure. It is the author’s name on the book. No one cares about the publisher or the agent or the bookstore.

Why is this so? Because books sell primarily through word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews. People buy what other people are buying. This means that people must talk about the good book they have read.

An author may think that simply by writing a really good book, a page turner that the reader cannot help but love, it would be enough to generate positive buzz. However, this is not so, because in life, there are many things to talk about. People are concerned with what their boss wants from them, about deadlines that are looming, about what’s for dinner, about the latest movie, or about the hundreds of other books, movies, TV shows, songs, comedy routines and funny stories they have experienced. For people to talk about one specific book in the face of all these topics, even if it is a truly great book, requires a lot of energy and enthusiasm.

Energy and enthusiasm come from other people, not from books. This means that the marketing message that “The book is worth buying and reading,” comes not from just reading the book, but from hearing that the book is a great book and then reading the book and confirming this. And even then, it’s not likely to come up in conversation.

To start this chain of endless enthusiasm, someone must be that book’s champion. Someone has to believe in the book so much that she can’t help but tell the world about it. And no one but the author will ever love that book that much.

And so the Rule of Sales makes it clear that the author must sell the book.

But there is more within the Rule of Sales. All the great talk about a book is for naught if the person receiving the sales pitch cannot buy a book once convinced to do so. The urge to buy the book will be fleeting at best, and once an author has talked a reader into buying the book, the book must be sold then and there, or it will not be bought. While people occasionally track down a book that they want, books tend to be an impulse buy (textbooks, bibles and other exceptions abound, so please accept this as a generality). The reader, once persuaded to buy, must buy the book at that moment.

This requires the author to be prepared for the sale. It may seem silly to say that the author must have a supply of books on hand to sell, but so many authors never carry any of their books. They never realize that of all the places a person can buy a book, the one place that will draw the most sales consistently is wherever the author happens to be.

In addition to having the books on hand, the sales material has to be available. Most authors are smart enough to at least carry sales material in their pockets, such as promotional bookmarks or postcards. Having a receipt book and plenty of change is also important to have. Some authors go as far as to carry a cell-phone credit-card scanner, although I don’t think it is worth the fees. It depends on how many books an author can sell when accepting credit cards, and I must say that I find fewer and fewer people carry cash or checkbooks anymore.

The most important tool in any sales kit is the sales pitch. The author must have a short, concise description of the book that will promote the book. It must get the right readers excited about the book. If the customer continues to listen, the pitch then leads the customer to buy the book. Asking leading questions instead of yes-no questions is always a better deal, and knowing when to simply stop and let the buyer make up his mind is an art form. The author must be prepared to answer all objections to buying the book, such as what to do if a person feels that the book is too expensive, or that he doesn’t usually read mysteries.

The ultimate secret embedded in the Rule of Sales is that the author must accept and enjoy the act of selling her books. Many non-fiction authors, especially in the financial and self-help genres, are very comfortable trying to sell their books. Novelists and historians, however, tend to shy away from selling. Selling is hard, and there is a lot of rejection involved. Novelists can feel especially rejected when the customer turns the book down.

Such authors look on selling as a distasteful and arrogant process. However, selling one’s book is why one writes…well, not everyone, but most book authors want to earn enough to support their writing habit. Books make money only when they are sold, and the author makes the most of her efforts when she can sell a book by hand and pocket the cash, and the compliments.

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In the next installment, I will discuss The Rule of 3 Feet. To subscribe to the entire series of articles on the topic of An Author’s Guide to Hand Selling Books, please click on the “Subscribe to this Group” button at www.ReadWriteRoyalty.Gather.com. To receive all of Mr. Rozansky’s articles, subscribe at www.FlyingPenPress.Gather.com.

David A. Rozansky is the publisher of Flying Pen Press. He has been in publishing since 1987, and has more than one million published words under his byline. Flying Pen Press is at http://www.FlyingPenPress.com.